Daughter of the Wolf

by Victoria Whitworth

  ‘But I need to know. I need to know now.’ Saethryth’s face had drawn in on itself like a thundercloud. She stared for a long furious moment at Widia’s bloodstained figure, with Abarhild bending over him; and Elfrun thought she really was going to interrupt, and at the worst possible moment. But just as she reached a hand to the other girl’s arm to warn her off, Saethryth turned round, hauling in her skirts and hurrying away in the opposite direction.

  Elfrun stared after her. But a moment later she had forgotten all about Saethryth, because her father was at her side, tight-lipped and shaking his head. ‘Three ribs broken, your grandmother says. That ragged filthy slash down the flank. The tusk must have gone in and sideways. And his face. There are teeth gone. It’s a downright miracle that his skull’s not smashed.’ He smacked his fist into the palm of his other hand. ‘I said priesting Ingeld would make no difference. I told everyone, and look. Your grandmother should keep a closer eye on him. Her moving to the minster – maybe it’s not such a bad idea after all.’

  Dunstan and another man had come back with a rough stretcher and were gently lifting Widia on to it. It looked horribly like a dead man’s bier.

  Elfrun hung on to her father’s last words as a distraction ‘She can’t look after the minster as well as the hall. They’re too far apart. There’s too much to do. She’s too old.’

  And Radmer laughed. She couldn’t understand why, but she felt such relief that she laughed too.

  ‘Don’t let her hear you say that.’ He was already sober again. ‘And even if she is getting old, your grandmother’s a fine manager. But she’s been singing that old song about wanting to take the vows they never let her when she was a girl. Find herself a chaplain. Fasting and prayer. Not yet, I’ve told her. We need her.’ That edge of bitterness had returned to Radmer’s voice. ‘But it seems Ingeld needs her more.’

  As long as Elfrun could remember Abarhild had spoken wistfully of retiring to a little bower at the minster, devoting herself and her wealth to alms and prayer and fasting. She had been about to do so when Elfrun’s mother had first fallen ill, almost three years ago. Was it really going to happen?

  She reached for her father’s sleeve. ‘I can do everything she does.’ Honesty forced her to add, ‘Well, nearly everything.’ But he had already turned away from her, heading towards the hall, where they had taken Widia.

  Why wouldn’t he listen? If she could manage the hall as well as ever her mother had, then perhaps there would be no more talking of marriage, of sending her away. That encounter at the spring meeting with Tilmon and Switha still haunted her. You have to put her somewhere... Something about that woman made her hard to resist. She had emanated a sweet reason, an almost-physical reassurance. But Elfrun’s father had held out against her and whatever she was asking. Elfrun didn’t begin to understand the simmering hostility between Donmouth and the new holders of Illingham, but she knew she had been glad to see her father turn his back on them.

  But they were not the only threat. She had a sudden, queasy memory of cousin Edmund’s ragged moustache, of the way he had pressed his thigh against hers on that rickety bench, the rankness of his breath.

  A jolt of anger shot through her. How could her father just walk away? What she hadn’t yet mastered around the hall, she could learn. She knew Donmouth, its intake and outfields, the shielings in the hills, the fish traps and weirs, the steady rhythm of summer harvest and winter hedging, the secrets of brew-house and bake-house.

  She might not have Abarhild’s mastery of loom and leechdom, but she was learning, and she could go on learning even with Abarhild a vowess at the minster. How much easier life would be without the constant fear of Abarhild’s hard stick and harder speech. Just her and her father, working together.

  But he was walking away from her, as though this were no more than a bitten lip, a grazed knee...

  Elfrun felt a powerful desire to hit something. She folded her arms across her chest and glowered.

  But the sun was still shining. And Abarhild would have forgotten all about her and her sewing in the worry about Widia. She could beg half a loaf from the bake-house and go out on Mara, and the day would be nearly gone before anyone thought again to look for her.

  11

  Ingeld slowed Storm to a walk. The shock was beginning to ebb, but he was still living in that moment, the one just before the world had erupted around them. They had been so careful, hardly breathing, treading so lightly that the grass barely rustled, ducking under branches, the dogs padding silently at their sides. They had left the horses tethered at the edge of the wood. And under the trees the world had been noonday-still, the birds quiet, the green-dappled shadow a welcome rest from the blazing day he had left down at the minster. He hardly noticed the hot sun now. His hands on the reins were slick with sweat, his heart still thudding.

  Why hadn’t the dogs scented it?

  The boar must have been asleep: they had almost trodden on its body. Like a black rock come to life, it had reared up squealing out of a patch of brambles and swung round straight at him and Dunstan. A great shove from Widia had sent him flying, and then Widia – always so neat-footed – had stumbled.

  The violent images repeated themselves over and over again in his mind’s eye.

  He was riding into the minster yard now, dismounting, the earth smacking into the soles of his feet. Athulf was at his side, trying to take the reins from his hands, and that fair child who dogged Athulf like his shadow hovering a few paces behind. He waved them away, more abruptly than he intended.

  Storm was distressed; he could sense it now. She was his darling, this fine, dark-eyed forward-moving grey. He had bred her, and broken her, and taken her with him when he first went to the archbishop’s household in York, sixteen years earlier, when she had still been too young to ride. He looked down in disbelief at his bloodstained hands, his clothes, the drying streaks and spatters on her white hide. Heahred, the broad-shouldered, ginger-haired deacon, was at his elbow. Athulf was gabbling, Heahred nodding, his gaze flickering back and forth.

  ‘Not your blood then, Ingeld.’ A pause. ‘Father. Father abbot.’

  That must be Heahred’s voice. Athulf didn’t call him Father, never had, even now they had priested him.

  ‘Radmer said it should have been me.’ Ingeld could hear the sounds his mouth made, but he didn’t quite know what he was saying, or what he might say next. He felt hugely weary, his knees sagging under the weight of his body.

  Heahred was clucking, fussing, calling instructions about cold water, hot water, fresh linen. ‘Put your head between your knees.’

  ‘I have to look after Storm.’ Ingeld held her bridle tight and leaned against the strong curve of her neck. Care for the horses first, always. He took a deep breath and felt the world steadying around him.

  ‘Come on, Cudda!’ Athulf, at his heels again, was shouting at the fair boy. ‘We’ll see to Storm for you.’

  ‘I can’t.’ Cudda looked trapped. ‘My father told me to be back at the forge by evening. He said he’ll lam me else.’

  ‘And I’m telling you to help me here.’

  Where had the lad learned that imperious tone? Ingeld turned on the pair of them. ‘You – Cudda? If your father wants you home, then you must go.’ He could sense Athulf bristling. ‘No arguments. Go.’

  And Cudda went, at a pace that suggested his father’s threats had a heavy hand behind them. Heahred was at his elbow with a bucket of water.

  ‘Father abbot. Give me the reins. Wash your face. You’ll frighten the children.’

  Obedient for once, Ingeld knelt on the packed earth and splashed his face. Now that it was wet, the blood smelt sharp again. He leaned further forward and dipped his whole head in the water, a shock of cold that brought him startled to his full senses. Keeping his head under as long as he could, he ran his fingers through his hair until he felt the spikes of dried blood begin to loosen and come away. He came up gasping.

  The water in the bucket had darkened, b
ut his hands were still spattered with leaking clots.

  Athulf had taken Storm into her stall, and Ingeld could hear the boy’s voice, soothing and clucking.

  A good boy, really, this son he had almost forgotten he had. His child with a girl who had died so long ago, and yet he remembered her more often than he did this boy in front of him.

  Ingeld took the towel that Heahred was offering, tousling and rubbing, smearing the linen’s glassy surface with Widia’s blood, diluted to a dog-rose hue but still staining everything it touched.

  Damn Radmer.

  It had not been his fault. Widia was the huntsman; the hall lands were his preserve. Widia had known there were boar about, he should have read the spoor better, the dung, the bruised undergrowth.

  Between them Abarhild and Radmer had dragged him away from his home in the archbishop’s household, back to provincial, dreary little Donmouth, his mother promising him everything she imagined he wanted, his brother berating him about his duty to God and his obligation to king and kin and land alike. Did they think him an ass, at once to be beaten with a stick and tempted with a handful of withered grass?

  And he had saved Widia. How was he to blame? Dunstan, the sword-bearer, the man of blood, had just cowered under the brambles. But he, the man of God, had gone in screaming and jabbing with the boar-spear as the great brute had stood over the huntsman’s body, rooting in his ribs with its tusks. He alone had driven it snorting and squealing away.

  A moment of triumph. That increasingly rare sensation of being fully alive, every vein and nerve thrumming.

  Damn Radmer, for spoiling his moment of glory.

  ‘Bring me another bucket, Heahred.’ He would have to change his clothes. But what little his mother didn’t know about getting stains out of linen, whether candle-wax or tallow-fat or blood, wasn’t worth the knowing. He peeled off his tunic and linen undershirt in one sticky mass, and left them in a crumpled heap. The blood had soaked right through to his skin.

  The water in the new bucket was warm, and this time there was real pleasure in plunging his head under and keeping it there as long as he could before flinging it back with a spray of drops, his lungs gasping like bellows.

  When he opened his eyes, a girl was standing in front of him, blurred and sparkling. He stared as his vision cleared. Cream, and the first ripening blush of strawberries, and her hair pale tendrils of spun silk that clung to her flushed skin. For a good moment he thought he was dreaming, still giddy from the lack of air. Quale rosae fulgent inter sua lilia mixtae... Had he said that aloud?

  ‘What?’ She was as short of breath as he was himself. ‘What are you talking about? I need to know what happened to Widia.’ Roses and lilies to look at, but thistles and nettles, alas, in her voice.

  But however much he regretted the harshness of her tone the lack of deference was in itself refreshing. Ingeld found he had grown very tired, very quickly, of the people of Donmouth and their tiptoeing and whispering in the presence of their new lord abbot.

  ‘Who are you?’

  She gave him a scornful look. ‘Don’t you know? Saethryth.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Luda’s daughter.’

  Luda’s eldest? He smiled, masking his astonishment, his ineptness. ‘Of course.’ He looked at her harder, searching for some resemblance to his brother’s hirpling, grizzled steward. Nothing.

  ‘And I was planning on marrying Widia. Now look at him.’

  ‘And that’s my fault, I suppose.’ Water was trickling down his ribs, raising his skin in little prickles. Heahred had come up with a fresh towel, and he reached for it gratefully.

  ‘Your fault?’ She sounded surprised. ‘No. It’s dangerous, the hunt. I know that. I’m not stupid. But I’m not marrying someone who’s a cripple from the start.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Not if I don’t have to. So, what happened to him? You saw it. Tell me.’

  ‘Yes, I saw it.’ Ingeld closed his eyes. The eruption of the black, squealing mass. Flash of tusk. Widia falling. Grunting from the beast and screaming from the man. ‘Face. Ribs. If he lives he’ll likely be lame, and I don’t think he’ll be as pretty as he was. But he should be able to get about. If he lives.’ Bitterness settled back down around him like a cloud. ‘If.’

  ‘And what about...?’ Her lashes were lowered and her voice quiet but the gesture she made was unmistakable.

  ‘I...’ Why was he so reluctant to answer? ‘I don’t know.’

  Heahred offered the towel, his features tight and expressionless and still somehow disapproving, and Ingeld took it, burying his wet face, mopping up the water that still dripped pink-tinged. Widia had taken the force of the charge meant for him, and Ingeld still could not quite believe it was not his own slashed face, smashed ribs, spilled blood. But, as the girl had intimated, it could have been so much worse.

  Guts. Groin.

  Trux aper insequitur totosque sub inguine dentes... but this aper had only sliced into Widia’s ribcage with its dentes, not buried them between the man’s thighs as that other boar had done to Ovid’s poor Adonis. And for that both the huntsman and his cream-and-roses girl should be grateful.

  When he looked up again she had gone.

  12

  Wynn waited until the clanging of the hammer had stopped before going up to the open side of the lean-to that sheltered the forge from the worst the weather could do and shouting her message.

  ‘What?’

  She guessed the hammer-blows were still ringing in her father’s ears. ‘Mother says, will you be here for the night?’ She set the cloth wrapping the hard black bread and harder cheese down by one of the upright posts that framed the smithy entrance.

  ‘Aye, we will that. We’ve a stack of sickles to see to. No harvest without the smith!’ Cuthred’s grin split his narrow, bearded face in half. He set his hammer down. ‘And I’ve had that long-faced misery guts Luda in here twice in the last couple of days telling me the barley’s ripe for the cutting, as though I’ve no eyes of my own.’ He spat. ‘And that’s just the hall-work, never mind the minster. Don’t go anywhere. I need you to set your hands to the bellows. I told Cudda to be here long before now but there’s no sign of him yet.’

  Wynn looked down to hide the smile that, try as she might, was tugging at the corners of her mouth. She loved everything to do with the forge, but when Cudda was there their father had little time for her. Cuthred jerked his head, and she set her hands to the wooden top-plates of the leather bags that were the life and breath of the forge.

  ‘Apron.’

  She glared at him. ‘It’s too hot.’

  ‘I don’t care.’ And when she didn’t move, he said, ‘Sparks. Your mam will have plenty to say to me if I send you home with cinder holes in your dress again.’ When she stuck her tongue out at him, he laughed.

  ‘Let me take my dress off then.’

  ‘No.’ Her father raised his hammer, only half-playful. ‘You’re plain enough as it is, I don’t want you scorched as well. Put that apron on.’

  ‘You let Cudda work naked apart from the apron.’

  ‘Cudda’s a lad.’ He raised the hammer again. ‘I’ll have no more of this, Wynn.’

  She snorted with frustration, but she knew when to stop testing her father’s patience and without further fight she unhooked the leather apron and pulled the strap over her head. Stiff, weighty enough to drag at the back of her neck, and it came down almost to her ankles.

  ‘Good lass.’

  She looked up briefly and grinned. Despite the upright stones between her and the fire-pit the heat struck her face as a solid thing. Up, down, up, down, her whole body straining to find the right rhythm, and slowly the bags filled with air and the charcoal in the forge began to glow once more, red, then orange. Cuthred picked up his hammer and tongs, and thrust the bent and twisted sickle deep into the radiant heart.

  ‘Hey!’

  The smith never looked up as his son came running in, but Wynn twisted round, s
omehow managing to keep the rhythm of the bellows steady.

  ‘That’s my job! Get out of it, chicken-bones!’

  Her brother was breathing hard, his fair skin flushed and damp, tunic filthy, bare legs spattered with mud. But he showed no sign of remorse for his lateness. Gripping the tongs carefully, Cuthred moved the bar over to the squared stone that served as his smaller anvil, squatted and began to beat with swift, measured strokes.

  Cudda said no more. Both he and Wynn knew that to interrupt at this point was to bring down their father’s wrath. As the fiery curve of metal began to dim, slowly regaining its true shape under the steady, clanging blows, their eyes met.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Her mouth shaped the words but made no sound. She frowned as she took in the dark spatter on the skirt of his tunic, and this time she did speak aloud. ‘Is that blood?’

  Cudda grimaced. He was about to say something, but glanced swiftly at their father and put his finger to his lips. The hot metal hissed as Cuthred thrust the sickle into the bucket of water that stood by the forge, and a sudden gust of steam billowed sideways through the smithy.

  His children knew to wait until Cuthred had added the finished sickle to the pile. ‘Right, lad. Take over at the bellows.’ He reached over to grab another damaged blade, then paused, weighing it in his hands. ‘You’ve been with Athulf again.’ His voice admitted no doubt.

  ‘And if I have?’ Cudda’s voice had a higher pitch than usual, and Wynn gave him another sideways look.

  ‘I’ve told you before. Your place is here.’

  ‘He told me to come—’

  ‘Athulf’s not your master!’

  Cudda stared at his father. ‘Athulf will be master here one day. He wants me as one of his men.’

  Wynn held her breath, hoping for trouble. There had been a lot of this lately.